Lateral moves are not harmless any more
What the Supreme Court’s Muldrow decision means for everyday management
If you manage people, you move people. Different store, different schedule, different team. Sometimes it is to solve a problem, sometimes it is just where you need a body.
And for years, many employers have treated those lateral moves as low risk. Same pay, same title, no problem.
But in Muldrow v City of St Louis, the United States Supreme Court has just made it easier for employees to challenge those decisions as unlawful discrimination under Title Seven of the Civil Rights Act.
This is one of those quiet decisions that does not look dramatic, but it changes the risk on the ground.
What happened in Muldrow
Sergeant Jatonya Muldrow was a police officer in St Louis. She worked in the Intelligence Division, which came with certain duties and perks. When a new commissioner came in, she was transferred out of that unit to a uniformed patrol job.
Her rank and pay stayed the same. Her new role was still supervisory.
But the job looked and felt very different. She lost prestige, lost some of the better schedule and lost specific opportunities and responsibilities she had before. She believed she had been moved because she was a woman, and she brought a Title Seven claim for sex discrimination.
The lower courts threw her case out. They said a transfer like that is only actionable if it causes a materially significant disadvantage. Because her pay and title were unchanged, they saw only “minor changes in working conditions”.
The Supreme Court disagreed.
The new standard: “Some harm” is enough
The Court said that nothing in the text of Title Seven requires a worker to show significant or serious harm. The statute talks about discrimination in terms, conditions or privileges of employment. It does not add the word “significant”.
So the Court held that for a discrimination claim about a transfer an employee must show:
the transfer caused some harm to an identifiable term or condition of employment and
the employer acted because of a protected characteristic such as race or sex.
The harm cannot be completely trivial, but it no longer has to reach the old “materially significant disadvantage” bar.
In practice, that lowers the threshold. Many lateral transfer claims that used to be dismissed early may now get past the starting gate.
Why employers should care
Here is what this means in real life.
Your decision to:
move someone from one location to another
change their team or supervisor
switch them from front of house to back of house
alter their schedule or regular days off
remove certain perks or opportunities
may now be enough to support a discrimination claim even if their pay and job title stay the same.
If the employee can show that the move left them worse off in some real way, and they can point to evidence that the decision was tied to race, sex, religion or another protected trait, you are in Title Seven territory.
Common risk areas for small employers
For most employers, the biggest risk after Muldrow is not formal demotions. It is the sideways moves that look neutral on paper but feel like a step down in real life.
Think about situations like these.
Moving the only woman or only person of colour off a high profile or specialist team and into a more routine role.
Taking someone out of a respected unit and putting them into generic frontline work, even though their pay and rank stay the same.
Reassigning an employee who raised a discrimination or harassment concern out of the busy, popular location and into a quieter or less desirable site.
Shifting an older worker away from the new technology project and into more routine or “back office” duties because you think they will be more comfortable there.
Moving a pregnant employee or new parent off the “good” shift pattern and onto evenings or weekends “to help with coverage”.
On paper, all of these can be described as lateral moves. Same job title, same pay. But from the employee’s point of view there is a real loss of status, opportunity or quality of work. They may lose prestige, networking, commission opportunities, better schedules or a path to promotion.
Under Muldrow, that kind of real world loss is exactly the “some harm” that can now be enough for a Title Seven claim if the employee can link the move to a protected characteristic or to retaliation. So the question for employers is no longer Did we cut their pay. It is Did this move make them worse off in any meaningful way in their day to day working life
and Is there anything about the timing or the comments around the decision that ties it to sex, race, age, pregnancy, complaints or another protected factor.
Practical steps after Muldrow
You do not have to stop moving people. You do need to treat transfers and major schedule changes with the same discipline you (hopefully) use for hiring and firing.
Here are some practical steps you can take.
One. Treat lateral moves as real employment decisions
If a move will change duties, schedule, prestige, access to training or promotion opportunities, treat it as an adverse decision for documentation and review purposes.
Ask yourself:
Would a reasonable person see this as a step down in any real way
Who else could we have moved
Are we being consistent with how we have treated similar situations
Two. Write a clean business reason
Before you tell the employee, write down the legitimate, non discriminatory reasons for the move.
Maybe it is staffing needs at a specific location, performance concerns in the current role, client demand or safety issues. Whatever it is, write it in plain language and keep it on file.
If you cannot explain it without saying things like “they would be a better fit with people like them” you need to rethink the move.
Three. Watch your words
Managers often talk themselves into trouble in the conversation, not in the decision.
Train supervisors to avoid comments that tie the move to protected characteristics or to the person complaining. For example:
“I think you will be more comfortable with the older customers”
“After that complaint, it is best if you go somewhere else”
Instead, focus on the business reasons you have already written down.
Four. Apply the same lens to your DEI efforts
Muldrow does not ban diversity work. It does remind employers that all employment decisions remain subject to Title Seven. If you are moving people into or out of roles as part of diversity initiatives, you still need to be able to show that each decision is based on lawful criteria and does not disadvantage someone solely because they are in a majority group.
Five. Refresh your policies and training
Update your discrimination and equal opportunity policy to flag that job assignments, transfers and schedule changes are covered decisions. Make sure managers understand that “no change in pay” is not a free pass.
A short training module or one of your Mini Training Bites can walk them through this case and what “some harm” looks like in your business.
The Lomond Legal bottom line
You run a business, so you will always need to move people around.
But after Muldrow, lateral moves are no longer the safe, invisible corner of employment law.
If a decision makes someone genuinely worse off in their day to day work and it is linked to a protected characteristic, it can be discrimination even without a pay cut.
Document the business reason.
Watch the language.
Train your managers.
And if you are unsure whether a proposed move crosses the line, get advice before you make it, not after the claim lands.
That way you keep your flexibility as an employer, without paying for panic later.